Clinton clarifies Bush tax cut remarks

6/5/12 9:06 PM EDT

Former President Bill Clinton is clarifying remarks he made, where he appeared to break with President Obama on the question of renewing the Bush tax cuts.

"On extending the Bush tax cuts, as President Clinton has said many times before, he supported extending all of the cuts in 2010 as part of the budget agreement, but does not believe the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans should be extended again. In the interview, he simply said that he doubted that a long-term agreement on spending cuts and revenues would be reached until after the election," Clinton's press office said in a statement.

Obama supports extending the tax cuts, except on upper earners.

"Second, on the current condition of the economy, he said at the top of the interview that the main goal for those in Washington was 'to keep the expansion going.' Later, in the interview, he said government spending levels were higher and revenues were lower than they would normally be because there was a recession and we're still living with the aftermath of it. It's obvious since we've had 4.3 million new private sector jobs in the last 27 months that we're not in a recession, even though we'd all like growth to be higher," the statement said.